Jonas Klüter

Jonas Klüter (Germany)

klueter @ ari.uni-heidelberg.de

Exploring strong lensed quasars and microlensed quasar with Gaia

Gravitationally lensed quasars are a powerful tool to study our universe. By studying those systems, it is possible to probe the lensing galaxies and the lensed quasars. Multiply imaged quasars can also be used to determine several cosmological parameters, e.g. the Hubble constant. Furthermore, additional substructures in the lensing galaxies can lead to microlensing effects in one of the images. This may explain the observed flux anomalies in known lenses. Satellites of the Milky Way can also cause these effects. Hence, a larger sample of microlensed quasars may answer the missing- satellites problem. The exceptional resolution (FWHM ∼ 0.1) of the ESA Gaia mission provides new opportunities to discover gravitationally lensed quasars. Furthermore, it might be possible to observe small astrometric shifts for one of the images caused by microlensing. The aim of my PhD is to find new lensed quasars in the Gaia catalogues and to analyze these as well as already known quasars for microlensing effects. Since this project touches the limits of the Gaia, we also try to improve the data processing of Gaia in order to detect additional faint sources close to already listed objects.